Berca Mud Volcanoes: Moonscape Scenes on Earth

The Mud Volcanoes from Berca are a wonderful all seasons destination for anyone, families with kids or geology and nature enthusiasts. Seeing these mud volcanoes is like an open-air geography lesson for students of all ages where you get to learn just how powerful and amazing nature really is.

Your experience begins before actually reaching the mud volcanoes as you go on the scenic road that meanders through traditional villages, green hills and scattered colorful houses, following the signs that show you the way to the main volcanoes areas in Berca, Paclele Mari and Paclele Mici.

Moonscape image

The volcanoes from these two plateaus, protected as a nature reserve and known as the Berca Mud Volcanoes, are truly distinct as nowhere else are found areas with so many active or fossil mud volcanoes having such typical shapes. These miniature volcanoes appeared from the mud brought up to the surface from the deep faults by natural gases that cut one of the most important oil and gas fields of the area: Satuc-Berca-Arbanasi-Niculesti.

The constant eruption activity has created an almost unreal landscape with mud rivers appearing and eventually drying up, adding extra dramatic features to the plateaus. This desolate, but beautiful scenery is completed by the unique and strange noise gas makes when it comes out from the craters appeared around their emission points. Exploring the Berca Mud Volcanoes is a unique experience for all your senses so be sure to take your camera to catch at least the visual memory of this rare and strange sight.

Travel tips

Close to Berca, you’ll find more mud volcanoes at La Fierbatori and Beciu, where, back in 1976, a mud eruption lasted for one month with an overall volume of 500 wagons of mud flowing with a speed of one meter per day.

If you’re interested in seeing, even more, mud volcanoes, you can head to Transylvania and visit the ones from Alba County, in Dumbrava, Aiud, Lupu and Mahaceni, or Sibiu County, in Sorostin and Hasag-Loames.